


Truth

by latin_cat



Category: Historical RPF, Sharpe - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Deathfic, F/M, Genderbending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-20
Updated: 2012-04-20
Packaged: 2017-11-04 00:31:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/387662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/latin_cat/pseuds/latin_cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1810 in the Peninsula. The General marks the anniversary of a death. Slight spoilers for <i>Sharpe's Havoc</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truth

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: _Any established male character turns out to be a woman in disguise._

General Wellesley sat before the fire in the Mess at Headquarters; shoulders hunched, a half-finished glass of captured sherry in his hands, his gaze fixed on the flames dancing in the grate. The other officers present now and again shot covert glances at their chief, quietly going about their business and careful to keep their distance from the gloomy figure. It was winter; snow was falling outside and the Allies were retreating back to Portugal.  
  
Damn the Spanish. It was thanks to them that the army could not be taken further forward to follow the advantage that had been so rightfully theirs after Talavera… but then the General had known beforehand that the Dons would not be easy allies. Still, Wellesley reflected with a grim smile, the expression in those blue eyes hollow with displeasure; it did not make the situation any easier knowing that such suppositions had been proved correct. Yet this was not the only sadness to dampen the Commander-in-Chief’s spirits this evening. There was an anniversary to remember as well, as a year ago to this night Arthur had died, and so it was that Mary Wellesley once more mourned her brother.  
  
Poor Arthur. As siblings she and he had been as close as it was possible to be; each the other’s confident against a despairing mother, disdainful brothers and a spiteful older sister. Everyone had always commented on how similar they were in looks and temperament, although Arthur was a good five years Mary’s elder. The closeness had remained as they left childhood for adulthood, Arthur supporting her in her wishes not to marry despite severe pressure from other members of the family to secure a beneficial alliance. Mary had seen what marriage had done to Anne, making an already spiteful girl into a bitter woman, and the thought of associating by necessity with other such women made her blood run cold.  
  
“I do not wish,” she had told Richard. “To be of society, but of use.”  
  
Richard had commented rather bluntly that in that case she might as well go whore herself.  
  
Yet she held her ground and in the end won her cause, Richard finding her a place as a governess with friends of his and quietly sending her away to the country. From that day forward, though, none of her family had spoken to her again – none, except Arthur. Arthur had written to her frequently, his letters always warm and anxious to hear of how she got on. Equally he was her agent regarding news of the rest of the family, as she read of births, deaths, marriages, advancements, his own mistaken marriage and the subsequent birth of his two sons; and she read of his exploits on the battlefield, of his courage and the victories published in the press, and she felt proud of her brother. He was passing from obscurity to prominence at an accelerated rate, defying all the gloomy prophecies of their mother and Mary knew, one day, that he would outshine even Richard.  
  
But then came Portugal. Then came Roliça and Vimeiro. Then came the Convention, and Arthur came to her to die.  
  
He did not know that he would die – of that Mary knew no man could ever be certain. The inquiry and scandal surrounding the Convention had taken a great strain on Arthur; even more so because he was at the same time still trying to clear the cloud that lingered over Richard’s activities as Governor General of the Indian Colonies. Arthur was already ill when he came down to visit her; his constitution had never fully recovered from his years in the Sub-continent, and by the time he reached Mary in Sussex the biting January air and a severe downpour had ensured that he contracted a fever. Mary had to take his arm as he staggered from the carriage to the door of her modest house, and Beckerman, a gruff German veteran whom Arthur had appointed to look after her, had been required to carry him upstairs to a bed.  
  
Arthur lingered a week in his sister’s care, fighting bravely and against overwhelming odds as he always did; yet this time it seemed destined that he would face defeat. The fever did not ebb, on the morrow it was raging, and that night Arthur slid into a state of delirium. All through his life her brother had been a very private man, but deprived of his proper senses Mary now heard things from his pale lips that it broke her heart to hear. So much worry, anger, vexation and regret – all the disappointments he had suffered in his lifetime seemed engraved on his memory, and the bitterness he felt over them was deep. She heard language he would never have dared use had he been aware of her presence beside his bed, witnessed tears and sobs and whimpers, saw those sharp blue eyes become dull, glassy and unseeing. He talked of Kitty. He cried her name often, begging her forgiveness, that he had destroyed their lives unthinkingly, and where was little Arthur? And Charles? Where were his sons, and why could he not see them? Perhaps he did still love her then, Mary had reasoned as she tried to calm him and mopped the perspiration from his brow. Not so much as to make him happy, but enough.  
  
There was another name though which he recited in fits of loquacious passion - Richard. However, as time wore on and Arthur’s end inched nearer she became absolutely certain by the professions of lust and undying love that it was not their older brother he referred to. That perhaps was what shocked her the most; Arthur had always confided in her over affairs of the heart, but not even she had been trusted with this secret. She wondered where this Richard was now, and felt guilty that he had no chance of knowing of his lover’s distress, as Arthur had strictly forbidden her on his arrival from revealing his illness to anyone.  
  
“Kitty would only fuss,” was his excuse.  
  
He talked ceaselessly about the war also. The problems faced by the troops in Portugal had been of prime concern to him before falling ill, but now it seemed they had near full reign of his unconscious mind. He had told her things about war in general before, about the importance of securing proper supplies, of close observation of the terrain to gain an advantage, that the French were by no means invincible and vulnerable when it came to Line on Column, how their foraging earned them the ill-will of the peoples they conquered and how that would turn on them in the end… All this she heard again, and some other things she had not before. One exchange particularly stuck in her mind;  
  
“Moore cannot do it,” he muttered feverishly under his breath. Arthur was awake again and fitful. “He cannot, he does not know… He cannot see what can be done with the hills! The hills – they are the most important – and the lakes… the river… he cannot see!”  
  
“What hills, Arthur?” she questioned softly, firmly, endeavouring to keep the exhaustion from her voice. It was the fourth day of his illness; the fourth day of her vigil beside his bed. Dr. Tully had just left, advising her to rest herself, but she could not in all conscience leave Arthur. No matter if the strain killed her as well, she could not bear that he should be alone. “Why are they so important?”  
  
Her brother’s eyes snapped up to her face, and for a moment it seemed that he was lucid.  
  
“Arthur?” Mary dared to hope. “Arthur, can you hear me?”  
  
“Yes. Yes, I can.”  
  
“Tell me about the hills. What is so special about them?”  
  
Arthur licked his dry lips, a violent tremor running through his body.  
  
“The hills on the Lisbon Peninsula… At Torres Vedras. There, there is a way to secure our hold on Lisbon even if the rest is lost.”  
  
“Tell me.”  
  
“Earthworks. Three lines of earthworks… Fill… filling in the gaps between the hills and flooding the valleys. Burn everything before it and the French will starve!”  
  
It was his last moment of true awareness of his surroundings, and what he had said chilled Mary’s heart. Before leaving for Portugal that summer Arthur had told her that if they lost Lisbon again they would have lost the war – and if Sir John, deemed to be one of the finest field commanders in the army, was suggesting that if things went wrong there could be no defence… This combined with Arthur’s previous assertions that Bonaparte could not be beaten in any other way began to sow the seeds of a plan in her head. It was a desperate plan, a plan besieged by risk, yet with the future of Peace at stake and her only ally in the family gone, by the sixth day she had made up her mind to follow it through.  
  
In the early hours of the seventh morning Arthur breathed his last, an _adieu_ to the mysterious Richard unfinished on his lips. Only when she was certain of his passing did Mary finally allow herself to cry, collapsed over his fast-cooling body and weeping into the blankets. Then she had risen from the bed, removed her dress, put on one of his shirts and a pair of his breeches, and called for Beckerman to come and cut her hair.  
  
There were several grounds for her believing that the deception would succeed; the similarity between her and Arthur was still quite strong despite their maturing into their own sex. Their eyes were the same heavy-lidded piercing blue, their hair the same rich tawny locks, though perhaps Arthur’s had been somewhat greyer around the temples. They were much of a height and, unlike Anne, Mary’s figure was slender and firmer from honest work.  
  
The first act she undertook to secure her future role was to use some of Arthur’s money to bribe Dr. Tully into agreeing with the following story; Sir Arthur against all expectation had made a miraculous recovery, yet his poor sister had contracted the sickness too and lost her life. Arthur’s corpse was duly dressed in her best frock, nailed up in a coffin with the cut-off pieces of Mary’s hair, and interred quietly in a private service in the local churchyard; a plain stone bearing the name of Mary Wellesley and the date of death to be added later to mark the grave. From that moment onwards she thought of herself only as Arthur, for Mary was now well dead and buried.  
  
Her second act was to write to Richard and inform him of their poor sister’s death. Here, in a fair copy of Arthur’s hand, she had some small revenge by laying the cause of the worry that brought on the fatal fever at Richard’s door; and if the Marquis did not smart at the truth of such accusations then he was beyond redemption entirely!  
  
Her third act was to adjust Arthur’s clothes. As stated before brother and sister had been much of a height and build, yet discreet padding was needed to be sewn into the shoulders of all of Arthur’s coats and the sleeves shortened a fraction, and on Beckerman’s suggestion she constructed a small triangular cushion which could be secured between her legs under her linen with a series of unobtrusive canvas straps. She sent a postal order to Messrs. Watts & Brinton, Theatrical Costumiers of Lewes, for a supply of crêpe hair and spirit gum out of which she made a convincing pair of grizzled sideburns. She stopped taking luncheon and confined herself to two meals a day as Arthur had done. She hired a horse and practiced riding seated in the male fashion, copied her brother’s signature and handwriting until she could do it without reference, and learnt a few steps of fencing from Beckerman. A month of quiet preparation for her role (fasting, reading, exercise and mimickery), a month to see the settling of her affairs and the sale of the house, and she judged herself ready to face public scrutiny.  
  
It was, she reflected, pitifully easy to fool Richard and William. Her stomach had turned when she first set eyes on the brothers she had not seen for over a decade; yet both were expecting Arthur, and Arthur it was that they saw enter the room.  
  
“Dear God, you look awful!” William had commented. “Have you been ill?”  
  
“Maybe,” she had replied, stalking across the room and slumping down in an armchair with a hefty sigh, rubbing her now greying temples. “I admit I am not entirely sure. Leastways it is all over now; you have had your way with her at last.” She directed one of her best glares at Richard. “I would give you the particulars of the location of her grave, yet somehow I doubt you have any respects to pay.”  
  
Richard was taken aback by this savagery, though in truth he had half-expected it.  
  
“Oh, come now, that is a bit steep!”  
  
“Why? You were the one that sent her away in the first place.”  
  
The Marquis sighed dejectedly.  
  
“Arthur, I have told you before, and I shall not explain my reasons again. Anne played her part for the family, but Mary would not – would you have had her wantonly pull us down? I doubt it. Let us not fall out again over so petty a squabble.”  
  
She bit her tongue and turned her head away angrily, her fury rising anew. That was what he thought of her? A petty squabble, and nothing more; nothing to upset the harmony of his scheming! They had not changed; neither of them had, and she doubted either Anne or any of her other relations had at all. Even seeing them through Arthur’s eyes did not make them any pleasanter company. Noting her upset, Richard sighed again and ventured to break the silence.  
  
“Was it… Was it an easy end for her?”  
  
“No,” she replied shortly, not turning to face him again. “Fever and delirium ravaged her until the end. She died cursing your name.”  
  
That was not true, but if it had been her that had died she was damned certain she would have uttered such a curse!  
  
“Enough of this, Arthur,” William chided. “Richard, you have not even told him the news yet.”  
  
She turned her head and frowned at Richard, an inner feeling of satisfaction as she saw her words had unsettled him. He cared for her curse, at least… “News? What news?”  
  
“Castlereagh is asking after you,” Richard cleared his throat before speaking again. “It seems that with Moore’s death and the business over this dratted Convention solved there are those who are eager to get you over to the Peninsula again, as the majority opinion seems to be that you are ‘the right man for the job’.”  
  
She raised a sceptical eyebrow.  
  
“How soon?” And in what role?  
  
“Nothing is certain yet –” Of course, it would not be. “– but moves are being made in the right direction, though March would probably be the earliest.”  
  
“March might be too soon,” she thought aloud. “I’ll need to take re-enforcements with me if anything at all is to be done, and the battalions need time to recuperate after Corunna.”  
  
“That is why we believe it best that you speak to Castlereagh yourself,” William said. “I have arranged for you to wait on him tomorrow at three o’clock. He is most anxious to hear your opinions.”  
  
And so General the Hon. Sir Arthur Wellesley duly called on Viscount Castlereagh the following afternoon at three, presented his opinions on a number of aspects of the campaign, and went away again. Castlereagh had seemed pleased, and promised to be in contact soon. A period of waiting ensued and the General returned to Dublin, there to continue the masquerade. The new Arthur passed scrutiny there as well, and even fooled poor Kitty; yet there was already such a coolness between Lady Wellesley and her husband that there was no occasion to fear for an awkward revelation. A memorandum was sent in March, Arthur was called to London again, command of the Peninsula forces was granted to him in early April, and then on the 14th of that month a new force set out from Portsmouth. Beckerman was engaged as the General’s orderly, for without him the charade could not continue.  
  
The situation on arriving in Lisbon was not encouraging, yet the French had been held on the other side of the Douro with no intention of an immediate move further south. Therein lay the opportunity of a swift march and a direct assault on Oporto, for that way there stood the best chance of wrong-footing the Enemy, and of making a firm statement that the outcome of a war against Bonaparte was no longer a foregone conclusion. This would be the ultimate test – mimickery was no longer enough. The original Arthur Wellesley had been brilliant, and now the new Arthur Wellesley would have to prove himself to be also. The army marched, Oporto was won for the Allies, and the French were in retreat. Arthur Wellesley was still a success; yet this victory was marred by one man.  
  
After the battle the Rifles officer had arrived with the pouring rain, dripping wet and wild as the night. She looked up in surprise as the doors of the blue reception room in the Palacio des Carrancas were thrown open and her gaze was met by a pair of equally startled jade eyes. He had seen through her; of that she became more and more certain as the report of Sharpe’s recent escapades with Christopher was given, her temper growing shorter and sourer as the conversation progressed. So this was Richard Sharpe; the man who had been her brother’s saviour all those years ago in India – and now she suspected had also been his lover.  
  
With this new information she had half-expected the visit, though she was still startled and somewhat afraid as much later that night the soaking-wet form of Sharpe materialised at the foot of the bed like a vengeful ghost.  
  
“You are not him,” he said flatly, his scarred face grim. “You look a lot like him, you speak like him, you think and you fight like him; but you are not him.”  
  
She gazed into his eyes, her own expression as grim.  
  
“No. I am not.”  
  
“Where is he?” Sharpe demanded.  
  
“He is dead.”  
  
To her surprise Sharpe did not try to deny it, but only swallowed, his green eyes turning from angry to distraught. He seemed to know as well as she that only death would have prevented Arthur from returning to his command.  
  
“Did you kill him?”  
  
She shook her head again.  
  
“No. A fever last winter… It was so sudden.” She paused and looked up from where her hands had been twisting in the bed sheets to meet his eyes again. “I am his sister.”  
  
Sharpe’s features formed an expression of both horror and despair.  
  
“It was the only way,” she continued earnestly, pleading for his understanding; though she was not sure why she felt she must justify herself to this man. “There was no other way to ensure the army would be led according to his methods – he said so himself.”  
  
The lie was not entirely false; no other General in the army would continue as Arthur had done, and so the best way had been to make sure that none of them took his lead. Yet still Sharpe said nothing; just stood, staring at her as if all the world were falling to pieces around him.  
  
“I am sorry,” she said, breaking the silence again. Her voice sounded almost pathetic in the darkness. “I –”  
  
But she could say no more, as Sharpe crossed the room and pulled her up from the bed into a rough, heated kiss.  
  
He took her up the arse, and from that night onwards that was how he always took her. For her it was a practicality – it would not do for the C-in-C to fall with child – but for Sharpe it seemed an act of remembrance. When he was with her he closed his eyes, moaned her brother’s name when he came; but never her true name.  
  
“You think of him, don’t you, when you’re with me,” she said one night as they lay together on her bed. “Don’t you?”  
  
“Yes,” Sharpe said. He did not even try to lie about it.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because I loved him.”  
  
“And don’t you love me?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Sharpe turned over so that he could look at her face; there were tears glistening on his cheeks. “You are him, but you’re not. I close my eyes and forget the difference, but when I open them again I always remember.”  
  
“But I love you,” she said defensively.  
  
Sharpe nodded glumly.  
  
“I know,” he said, his voice catching. “And that’s what makes it worse.”  
  
And she knew it could never be any other way. To the rest of the world and to herself she was Arthur Wellesley; but on this day, and when she was with Sharpe, the lie was too weak to be believed.


End file.
